Excuse me, Hero
by Silvara
Summary: The arms of her Chosen One were comfortable enough, but it did not mean she was not allowed to be snotty from time to time. Without effort, she could find a thousand reasons to complain about her situation. But it also took him one touch to scatter her protests. [snotty!Hylia/Zelda x Link] Sligh crackfic... If that's how you consider it.


_Warning : Basically, this can be read as a crack!fic. Hylia/Zelda is busy complaining about..._everything_ in her world. There is a bit self-bashing, but the atmosphere is supposed to be humorous, it's so nothing it to be taken too seriously. _

_Hope you'll not hate me for this._ :p

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><p>It was calm outside. Little sounds, softly filtering though the wooden walls of their cabin. He had managed to build it on his own after few attempts.<p>

Link did this much while she could only sit and look. Because all she had offered so far were bad plans, two shreds of will, and a sweet petite figure...

And she could knit.

She sneered.

The list came easily: she could hardly bend his bow, she lacked strength to hurl herself at anything with the hookshot, and she couldn't throw bombs.

From there, it only went on: she couldn't lift a sword to save her life, her throwing of knives and whip lacked velocity, and the scattershot wasn't much use for hunting unless for strategic distractions while he did the job.

Now it hadn't been much of a problem before.

Zelda, had passed her wing ceremony and had been content to set down weapons from that point on. But with fresh divine memories, the weakness and dependence of her new body felt insupportable. She hated the role in which she had set herself.

Her plan had never been kinder to her Hero's comfort than to her own. But right now, all she could think of was everything she had lost. What little of her damaged soul and memories that had been saved became caught in a body she had molded herself for the sole pleasure of another, both slaves of time…

She turned in her sheets and pierced a dark stare through her small pillow. It didn't do much to help her restlessness, so she decided to banish it from her bed and sent it flying down to the feet of their bed.

_Now where was she? Yes:_

Her hero had designed an ocarina so they could practice together, and it was a welcome change when she tired of playing the lyre and watching over the tiny lives of the insectary she had built.

Since she retrieved the knowledge for it, when Link found the needed pieces in Lanayru, and when she could gather enough magic to deal with minuscule components, she went back to build little robotic birds and insect-like devices; the only kind of beings she could create anymore.

True, she found amusement in the way tiny songbirds were still drawn by her whistles and kept hopped around her as if surprised by a hidden part of their instincts.

Link seemed to have gotten used to what had first appeared as mood shifts. She wondered if he begrudged her still for begin there, silent, listening and think differently behind the front of his childhood friend. Not that Zelda wasn't part of her, but her previous consciousness now felt like a small closed room, a small part of the whole that one day made Hylia.

If she was to be honest, life on the surface hadn't been half bad. ...She just wished she hadn't set herself to end in the doll role.

Cynicism.  
>She wasn't sure how she felt about this. It sounded so ungrateful, didn't it? She let out a soft sneer.<p>

These somber thoughts sounded out of place in this world of peace, but she just felt so dramatic tonight. She liked her Hero. She liked him enough to welcome his fiercer affections.

Could it be enough?

Sometimes, she felt like a prisoner. Sometimes, the knowledge was extremely frustrating. In the end, she had fallen back under a mortal man's wing.

Link wasn't just any mortal. Everything that made her an hylian regarded him as her best friend, the only friend she could count as her whole self, the only one who actually knew _what _she had been — if not how much her mind has been changed. He was easy to confide in and no secret could stand long between the two of them. Yet, she was much more than a hylian. She had tasted too much power to forget, to be content being coddled.

Hylia didn't crave power, but the mourning of freedom was not an easy path and she feared gratitude would slowly turn into obligation and servitude through the years. Already, she knew him too well to not enjoy catching him up in sadistic, if harmless, mind games; an unconscious way of revenge for the physical power he had over her. The worst thing was that he didn't seem to mind. Did he? She was almost sure he couldn't enjoy them as much as she did, at least. _What had she done to him?_

She was a monster. What had made her even think the Golden Powers could allow her to wish upon them as a mortal? She had, after all, wrapped nothing but personal desires of freedom into her oath to fight for the land.

The Goddesses must have seen through it all anyway, because now, her wish caught her up in this ironic situation, in a millennia-old body and under the protection of a boy...allegedly mature enough to balance the Golden Power.

There was that.

But it didn't solve her helpless feeling.

Regardless of all her feats of war and strength of heart - throwing herself at a mortal man after barely ten little years of swooning - Hylia had probably not been ready to her goddess role…she had forgotten to close a Gate of Time (!)

More than the control she had been used to through time travels, she mourned her wings (ironic as that order was). Being root to the earth dropped an indefeasible weight on her soul. From then on, her every hour, day, year of sleep in that crystal had slowly taken a bitter toll. Then she began to feel them ; the myriad little losses that she had not clearly defined until then, when they were just lifeless memories.

Then he had come. Seeing him—as young as she has left him—she had almost collapsed of relief. Her Hero had survived. Everything was over. And there was a perk of being mortal : they could live together, they could attune their voices to a new song…

They sat and talked for an hour or so. He wanted to make sure that her body had time to learn to walk, and…and she was glad to be able to stay alone with before meeting the world again. She quickly realized that even if it was him, it wasn't really him. It would never exactly be him—and different parts of her had different feelings about that. It took a while to get used to the differences between them, and she worried that if she let herself go, she might blurt out something that was not meant to his ears. Their similarities were heartwarming and painful at the same time… It rose memories of an unbreakable knight from another life that had never left his soul been tarnished by fate. It rose memories of other trials she had set long ago ; long, old things she held most dear and wanted to remember even if the Hero couldn't anymore.

She had been surprised by the shining love that _Zelda_'s husband had shown her despite of the differences.

She never had the time to sort out what feelings would be expected of an hylian. When she awakened in her incarnate body, the older and deeper emotions she remembered rushed back in, along with her ancient philosophies. As a result, she now only felt respect...admiration for her Hero. Maybe…a little more for his spirit...that lovely spirit that all of his incarnations would share.

But she knew her behavior had changed. She spoke to him more carefully now, weighting each word. She had reasons to feel gullible and couldn't always prevent it to weight on her face. Laughing had been tedious at first.

Yet, even when the Demise's messenger had made everything futile—through a Door of Time…her own device—this Hero had followed her again. Link had brought her back, patched her up and wound his arm around a little girl who was afraid to hope again.

She had thought that he would quickly tire of the charade; he would have to accept Zelda's changes. She hoped he would speak, he would blame her openly, anything to avoid his complete rejection. Yes, Demise would return. And it meant that many of her cruelties had been vain…

But he was never sullen and his patience, his hope slowly made her feel at home. Still, the simplicity of their relationship had been tarnished, and she hoped it wouldn't be lost forever. She had much to sort out, and didn't know how much she could tell him about it, but in the end she wanted to believe that they could both recover and find each other again.

So she had carefully wrapped herself around him, making sure to be the center of his world, making sure his soul would not have a chance to escape, to make their fate unmovable through the tides of time.

Demise might have been right. She had been selfish and intrusive with the Heroes' lives. She supposed the old Zelda would have felt guiltier about it. But she was many more things than that name, and being endowed with divine-like powers did strange things to one's reasoning.

The Link she had loved thousands of years ago, the one who had fought alongside her in the war, barely used to conceal his words around her. What would he say if he realized what she had taken the liberty to do with his soul and spirit? As long as her Hero would be alright with her decision, she didn't have any reason to well up guilt.

His new incarnation only saw _Zelda_. It was something logical and made things simpler for both of them ; she understood it well and even got used to it. Till the end of his battles, his mind had carefully refuted any fact suggesting that his childhood friend had been an incomplete part of a sum, along with all the evidence of her differences. True, sometimes she wondered how he really felt about her—the whole present her and all of her deeds—and it was frightening _terrifying_.

Yet, her Hero's incarnation wasn't slow—maybe distracted sometimes, and late when she didn't wake him on time—but he was also well-lettered and practical. Things rarely escaped his notice; it just wasn't in his character. But whatever his feelings truly were, he did a very good job passing them off as love.

These were the ways of his incarnation…of Zelda's Link.

She couldn't help but smile a little, both softened and impatient—a strange mix she knew she would get familiar to.

He had barely dared to hold her even to save their lives. …Well, she could not honestly say that of her husband anymore.

But even then it didn't count…he had been…

Well, it did count okay. Maybe her trials—or the Triforce—had changed him. She had yet to be convinced of that, through.

She wouldn't mind if he convinced her of that—but she was getting astray.

She knew better than to hope foolishly. She _knew_ the physical memory of each incarnation were unique, lost through the death of the body. _Would she have to continuously remind it to some parts of her human shell now? _That was a rule that has always been out of her reach. And it didn't matter anymore now than it had before.

It didn't matter. Because even if she couldn't probe as far into spiritual designs as she used to,

the strength of his soul secretly awed her, and she wondered if the goddesses had crafted it for her just as she had crafted her body for him…

Her husband's arm constricted around her as he brought her back against him.

How could she properly maintain a mourning gait when her body found this much comfort in his embrace? She snuggled back into his chest, closing her eyes.

Maybe she could cope up with being someone's doll for decades -what was the average length of two mortal lives?- if that someone were the Hero. It seemed reasonable, didn't it? _She felt his heartbeat quicken against her back_.

Knowing that he had wielded the whole Triforce was somewhat...awing. After all, they were so well concealed in his small, lithe figure ; the edge of his dormant wrath, the steel of his will, the infinity of his spirit... Yet, these considerations didn't matter, because she was already honor bound to the boy for the rest of so short a life. But when she had done this to herself, romance had a very different definition. Back then—eons ago, she could never fathom why the context of that choice would matter so much.

She sighed and turned beneath their sheets as sleep eluded her more by the second. She felt his arms squeeze her waist and allowed him to bring her against him. _How long was he awake?_

She had already taken so much from his soul and spirit now... She wasn't sure she could get herself to stop anymore, anyway.

She leaned against his warm chest, feeling his breath in the back of her hair.

Perhaps it wasn't retribution, after all, she thought as she slowly slid his fingers into her mouth and nibbled at them. Perhaps it was a fair trade.

He rose to nuzzle an exposed part of her neck and chuckled sleepily.

She could feel his smile on her skin when he heaved a warm breath against the small fragile area.

She felt her heart still when, for the first time, _he whispered her name_

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><p><em>.<em>

_A/N: The balance of their subconscious power-games is one of the reasons I like zelink so much. On one hand, given Link's renowned Courage, his potential for power and being sometime able to withstand the whole Trifoce, I doubt Link ever felt forced to follow Zelda's command. And on the other, I don't think Zelda consider it a game. I don't think she ever meant to trick the Hero with empty smiles. But both the Princess, used to be in charge, and the avatar of Wisdom, used to calmly plan ahead and confident she can deal with the consequences of the feelings she encourages, feel too overwhelmed when the revelation of their own duty __—__as a Queen or a lesser Goddess— comes to them. So they easily let the weight of it come in the way of their unvoiced promises. It doesn't mean that they doesn't care, that they won't try to make it up for him. Also most Zelda are really bad at tying loose ends. And planning. And admitting their own feelings._

_These are the points I would like to explore in The Mask Memory. Because IMB the "Fierce Deity" of Termina was only the physical embodiment of Link's wildest feelings. Not just the bad ones, mind you, but all the hopes and desires he would normally sacrifice to please others, and of course, Zelda. He may also be the spirit of an older corrupted hero of legend from Skyloft or before. A 'Link' gone rogue after donning the Mask of Majora. Zelda or Hylia at that point, may then have played The Song of Healing on him as either salvation or punishment._

_What remains, tho, is that once a hero endows the mask, he can still govern himself, but knowing his power, he stop to care for anyone's approval. And freed from the avatar of Wisdom, he set this own moral boundaries and knows no more hesitation. His means are wild, though not forcibly chaotic. He let himself probe, request, maybe demand things for himself. And, heh, that is no luxury when it comes to be so intimately tied to Hylia's lineage._


End file.
